Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State

Charlotte: Underappreciated hub of Confederacy

I asked historian Michael C. Hardy what surprised him most in researching his forthcoming “Civil War Charlotte”:

“How little recognition that Civil War Charlotte has gotten over the past 150 years….

“Charlotte was a major rail hub, had some major private sector manufacturing facilities, had one of the most important Confederate naval manufacturing yards, plus Confederate medical works and chemical works, and was the last capital of the Confederacy.

“Yet the role of the city and war in most Civil War histories is relegated to a sentence or two, usually about the week Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government spent here at the end of the war.”

You raise a really good point. Within a month’s time, the Confederate government existed in some form in Danville, Virginia; Greensboro, North Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; Abbeville, South Carolina; and, Washington, Georgia. However, at no time was the entire Confederate government together, except at Charlotte. Full meetings were held in Charlotte by Davis and his cabinet. Plus, the papers from various branches of the War Department were stored in Charlotte, and for a time, the remnants of the Confederate treasury. The Confederate government broke apart in Charlotte, and the meetings that took place after that were fragmentary, often with just Davis and one or two officers or cabinet members. Want to know more? You’ll have to read the book!